On the Sunday we visited friends of Sue and Daniel who owned a farm a short distance from Edinburgh.  They cooked us a lovely roast dinner and gave us a tour of their property. It was a lovely way to spend the day.  On Monday we did the tourist thing in the city, and I remember being quite impressed with Edinburgh castle.  The crown jewels were lovelier than the English ones in my humble opinion!  That afternoon we took a bus to the airport where we hired our car.  Our stop that night was Dumfernline, where Sue had an appointment to meet with local organisers of the Scout movement.  Sue is something of an expert on Lone Scouts, which is a scouting group for isolated children, and the local Scout groups were investigating its possibilities for isolated Scottish teenagers.  We stayed in a great little pub, with an owner who was as gay as a picnic basket and an absolute delight to talk to.

From Dumfernline we took a beautiful drive to Glencoe.  We stayed in a gorgeous B&B with a woman who cooked absolutely wonderful evening meals.  I distinctly remember breakfast at this place including a bowl or porridge served with a wee dram of whisky!  Glencoe is beautiful, and I would love to return and spend much more time here.

We spent the next night staying on the Isle of Skye, and really enjoyed driving around the isle.  The weather was really warm but alarmingly windy!  Places we visited included Dunvegan Castle where I was particularly taken by the ‘Fairy Flag’ and The Museum or Island Life.   We stayed in Portree overnight, and the next morning we made our way along the Loch Ness where of course we stopped to visit one of the ‘official’ visitor centers dedicated to ‘Nessie’.  We continued via Inverness to Aviemore where we stayed.  The television series ‘Monarch of the Glen’ was filmed near here, and I loved wondering along the trails at Rothiemurchus Estate.

On Friday we drove back down to Edinburgh, but not before we stopped at Dalwhinnie Distillery  where I confess I discovered a taste for fine Scottish whisky.  The time in Scotland was not nearly enough.  I would love to return to do some walking in the highlands, and see much more of this gorgeous part of the country.

We travelled to Geneva next, where we stayed at the YHA.  Clean? Yes. Efficient? Yes. Did I feel like I was a naughty kid on a school camp?  Yes!  Youth hostels are great, but I think I have been a supervising teacher on one too many camps not to get a little freaked out by all the rules!  From memory, we spent two nights in Geneva and spent our time touring the United Nations (impressive) and the museum of the International Red Cross (really interesting - see their website here).  We wandered along the lake, which was very pleasant, and poked around the city’s shops, as you do!  On the morning we were due to leave we had time to visit an exhibition of art by John Howe who was one of the two conceptual artists who worked on the Lord of the Rings films.  His work was lovely, and I bought a limited edition print which sadly is still sitting, unframed, on a shelf behind me as I type.  One day I will find the money to get my favourite framer in Murray Bridge to frame it for me…

That afternoon we took the train to Milan in Italy.  I think this was my favourite train journey of all; the views were spectacular through the alps.  We only intended to stay in Milan for one night because we were on route to the Cinque Terre, which became one of my favourite places in Italy (so much so I am going back there this July!).  We had been advised (correctly in my opinion) that Vernazza was the loveliest of the villages to stay in.  We arrived on a Saturday afternoon with no accommodation booked, hoping that the local internet cafe would come through for us like the one in Croatia and find us a room.  The weather was hot so we figured that if the worst came to the worst we could sleep on the beach.  Fortunately (particularly in the light of the thunderstorm that hit late that night) the internet cafe proved very helpful and we were sorted out with a lovely apartment - only for the first night, but we could sort out the other two nights later!

The bed in our room was a double made up from two singles, so we dug in and helped our hostess to remake the beds back into the singles.  She seemed really chuffed that we were willing to help, taught us how to fold fitted sheets (quite a skill) and said in broke English, “American… very difficult.”  I didn’t think helping to remake your own bed was so unusual, but there you go.  For the record I have booked a room (I hope) with the same woman for my next holiday in July, which I am really looking forward to!

In the morning we found a little cafe not far from our apartment which sold the most divine pastries, fresh peach juice and fresh strawberry juice for breakfast.  It was run by two brothers who wooed us with “Beautiful Australians, you looka justa likea Nicole Kidman.  Come and eat in our restaurant!”  What’s a girl gunna do?  Besides, did I mention how good those pastries were?  They turned out to be enormously helpful people too, who found us accommodation for the next two nights.

We spent our time in Vernazza walking between the five villages of the Cinque Terre, swimming in the sea, eating wonderful seafood (I discovered fresh anchovies - yum!) and generally relaxing.  It was the last place on our itinerary and we headed back to Milan for our flight home on the Tuesday.

Well that’s it for the summer.  The next break was the October half term when I went to Scotland with some friends from Clare.  I have to mark midyear exams and write school reports this week, so I am sure I will find time to write that blog!

We had to wait for the afternoon before we could get a train to Lucerne as there were apparently problems with flooding along the way. However eventually we were off and arrived in Lucerne at about 5.30pm. Our humble hotel is in the middle of the old town which is nice, and after we checked in and dropped off our things we went for a wander along the riverside to find something to eat, finally settling on a English pub called Mr Pickwicks. We noticed during our walk that people were busily dropping off loads of sandbags, lining them along the river and stacking them in front of shop doors. The pub we ate in had a pile ready to go just beside the door. We returned to our hotel wondering just what today would bring.

Early this morning we could see that the river had indeed burst its banks and flooded some of the lower lying places. We were still able to cross over to the other side to visit the train station to see about trains to Geneva tomorrow and to find out if it is worth taking a day trip to Mt Rigi given the conditions. We were advised that there is no problem getting a train, and that we should wait until midday to see what the conditions are like to go to the mountain. As I write this we are still waiting… From there we decided to venture back onto the side of the river on which our hotel is based to check out the Glacier Gardens which were really interesting. Discovered in 1872, it is a now exposed rock surface on which you can clearly see the impact of a glacier. The area includes a museum with some lovely old furniture, and a hall of mirrors which was brough to Lucerne after the 1896 national fair in Geneva, and which did my head in completely… thought I was never going to get out!!

We were probably there for about two hours, and walked back to the train station to discover that the street we could walk along before was now closed to traffic, and that pedestrians were now having to roll up their pants and wade through. I would like to congratulate the makers of my hiking boots; once again they have proved their waterproofness! Mr Pickwicks has now got half a metre of water banked up against its doors (and hopefully not flooding throughout…). Guess we won’t be eating there tonght!

So, as I type, the waters are still rising. However it is quite clear that the authorities here are well organised and prepared to deal with whatever eventuates! However we might be here for another day yet…

I will write in more detail later, but suffice to say I have really enjoyed it here, and have had loads of opportunities to improve my German! I also wish I had a spare couple of hundred Euros and an empty pack so I can load up on the new season winter clothes. The Germans do have such good taste in shoes!

At 10am Thursday morning we met Magda, our guide. She turned out to be an enormously helpful and interesting woman in her early thirties. She dr0ve us to the village (my first time in a car driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road!) chatting all the time about the history of the town and what we might (or might not) find there. The town has a population of only a couple of thousand people, and is quite sleepy and off the beaten track. I don’t think they see too many Australians there! The town is divided by a river, and the German settlers (who had come to the area from other areas of Prussia) lived on one half while the Polish lived on the other. The German section had an Evangelical Church, and the Polish a Catholic. The two communities always existed harmoniously together, until the Germans were forced to leave and return to what was now Germany. Since WWII and the communist takeover, no German was welcome in this area. Anyone visiting claiming German ancestry (even if they were Australian) was regarded suspiciously, even with fear as the communists had successfully persuaded the local population that it was only a matter of time before the German sought to return to take their land from them. Thankfully this is no longer the case, and since 1989 and the end of Communist rule, many Germans have returned freely to visit the home of their ancestors.

I had hoped to visit the Evangelical church as it was the church my ancestors had attended and possibly married in. Unfortunately it was bombed during WWII and not rebuilt. A park stands there now. I already knew the nearby cemetry was virtually non-existent as there was no longer any German families to care for it, but was still pleasantly pleased by what we found. Yes, the gravestones had fallen and the whole area was covered in ivy. However it was a pleasant, quiet place, and a memorial had been recently placed there to commemorate the Germans who had been buried there. We will always wonder if any earlier generations of our family are buried there, but will never know for sure because of the lack of records.

We spent some time in the Catholic church, thanks to Magda who approached the priest to unlock the building for us. It is a beautiful building, and existed in the time of my ancestors. It is likely to have been a significant place for them.

After lunch Magda drove us to a nearby village to show us a church that had been built in the same style as the Evangelical church so we could see how it might have looked. She again sought out the local priest, and found a radical retired priest who apparently had written a book about his belief that original sin began with Cain rather than Adam and Eve. Interestingly the Catholic church was reluctant to publish it!

Magda returned us to Poznan where we shared a drink, and then dinner, and ended up chatting until 10pm. We really enjoyed talking with her, not only because of her genealogical knowledge, but to find out what life was like in a communist country (Magda was 17 in 1989, and well able to remember the things that happened). After 12 hours with Magda, I felt I had well and truely got my money’s worth, and then some. If you have ancestors who came from this region, I can highly recommend this organisation!

We returned to Auschwitz, which was primarily a work camp, although plenty of people were murdered here too. We passed through the gates with the words “Arbeit macht Frei” (Work brings freedom) and began a tour of the exhibitions. Several rooms contained items taken from those murdered at Birkenau, including reading glasses, shoes, suitcases, and the most sickening, an enourmous pile of human hair taken from the heads of some 40000 women.

We spent the whole day at the museum; there was more than enough to see (too much?). Like the Peace Museum in Hiroshima, this is a place all people should come if they possibly can. It is not a pleasant day, but it is an important one.

Tomorrow we take the train to Warsaw, where we will stay for two nights. After that we head west to Poznan, where I will visit Trzciel (formerly Tirschtiegel) which is the village from which my Hampel ancestors came.

Our room is in a separate building from the main guesthouse, and we needed to walk back there for breakfast every morning. We arrived there at about 9 am to discover a bit of a commotion. The girls who ran the place were trying to shoo some men away from the dining room. It turned out that there was a group of men on a bucks weekend staying there also, and had just returned from a night’s carousing. Still a little… merry, shall we say, the girls thought it would be bad form if the other guests had to put up with them. In actual fact, they stayed (beer in hand) and actually had some useful advice, such as where to visit in Warsaw (where they were from) and that we should avoid them if at all possible that evening as they were likely to be quite drunk! They tried to assure us that not all Poles drank beer and vodka for breakfast! A very entertaining way to start the day.

We spent Saturday wandering the town, ‘doing’ the town square quite thoroughly, and treating ouselves to some amber jewellery, available in abundance in this part of the world. We visited the former Jewish quarter, including a museum in a former synagogue. Eventually we made it to Wawel, the location of the castle and Cathedral, where we lost count of the number of weddings being pushed, production-line style, through the chapel in the centre of the Cathedral. It was a stunningly beautiful setting for a wedding, but I am not sure I would like several hundred tourists looking on!

We spent the evening enjoying several buskers performing in the streets. The piano accordian players are particularly good, and I have heard a couple of brilliant versions of Toccato and Fugue (sp?). After dinner we returned for a last wander around the square, and found several hundred people waiting expectantly at the foot of the church. Every so often a bugler plays from the top of the tower, and we had heard him several times. However this time everyone was waiting almost in silence. As he began to play, the crowd hushed completely, the horses and carriages stopped, and the bugler had everyone’s undivided attention. At the end of his short performance, the crowd applauded. It was a really special moment and a lovely way to finish the evening.

After checking in we decided to get our bearings and go for a stroll through the old town. The first port of call, as always, was somewhere selling a map. Prague was crowded with tourists - like every other place we have been so far, the price for travelling in the summer peak period. However the winding streets and beautiful architecture were still interesting. We found a lovely restaurant for tea, and collapsed in our room at about 10.30pm.

We decided to get a relatively early start and try to see something of the old town before the crowds decended at about 10am (which appears to be the magic time for tourists, particularly day trippers on coaches). At 11 am we joined a walking tour we decided to do. We found the brochure in our hotel, and the walks sounded really interesting. We chose a 3 hour walk that took in the main features of the old town. They advertised that they took only small groups, and we were pleased to discover that this was accurate. Our group had only 8 people in it: ourselves, plus two other Australians (Shaun from Sydney, and a Perth girl who had been working in Melbourne, managing a chain of Witchery stores), and four English tourists (three students and an elderly woman ‘addicted to travel’). Our guide, George, was really interesting and a lot of fun. It turned out that his English teacher had been an Australian man, who was also a musician and had played in a band which was a side project of Rob Hirst, a member of Midnight Oil. As a result, George had become a huge Midnight Oil fan, and had attended their last ever concert! We got along really well together, and most of us ended up having a very late lunch together.

When Jan and I left the group, we made our way to the train station to book our tickets to Krakow in Poland. This done, we did some last minute shopping (I allowed myself a wooden marionnette puppet of a bird) then had tea (I had a lovely grilled whole trout - and managed to remember how to eat it without getting any bones, thanks to my training at Lucindale Area School, which has an aquaculture department!).

On our last morning, I rose early to try to get some photos of the Charles Bridge and the old town without any tourists in it. Of course, at least another 30 tourists had the same idea, and I didn’t quite manage as many photos as I would have liked. Our train didn’t leave until 11am so we had a leisurely breakfast (did I mention how good those breakfasts were?) then stopped at the post ffice on the way to try to send a package of things I had bought to my mum and dad. Unfortunately their computer system was having problems, so I still have the parcel with me - will try to send it tomorrow from Krakow!